Actually no, for patents prior to 1995, it's 20 years from the earliest application OR 17 years from the date issued, whichever is longer. For all patents after 1995 it's 20 years from the earliest application. The issuance date does not matter any more.

It was first applied for Feb 17 1990, so 20 years ran up this past Feb 17.

It was issued Oct 5, 1993, so 17 years ran up 9 days ago.

In other words, there aren't going to be any new lawsuits, but those in progress will continue. That's why they shotgunned them like this, they had almost no time in which to do it.

Companies without the cash to get reams of patents still innovate.they still make profits because big companies are slow and clumsy.Copyright protects them from having their product simply taken and resold openly(a small amount of piracy excepted) and their competitors have to actually spend the time to create their own product and catch up.

20 years is 5-10 generations?5 years is 5-10 generations for some software.

Things that seem obvious after they've been invented should not be patentable in the first place. Such innovations would probably be stumbled upon by someone else in short order. Putting a 20-year monopoly on such ideas is counterproductive to the economy, partly because lots of others tend to casually implement the feature. They independently discover it and use without much thought, because it seems obvious. That sets up a rich playfield for patent trolls.

I read the patent, all 270 pages of it, most of which is repetitive photographs of text or drawings with slight word changes to make the "patent" apply to just about any industry they could think of 20 years ago. It uses two key words: "Contextualizing" and "Alternates". Each image usually has two adjacent boxes of text which look like outline notes. Another set of images is of display device which appears to have a screen and two knobs. The screen is divided into three sections. The upper left is and index tree, the lower left is a help section, and the right side is where information relating to the selection made in the upper left panel is displayed. Most dev tools API documentation is constructed like that, in either GUI or console format, and has been since well before the patent application date.

The example code is written in BASIC and is full of "CALL nnnn"'s as a way of controlling flow. It does not contain lines about moving a mouse icon over an HTML hotspot and have an action take place. The example code does not contain the concept of call-backs or other such coding mechanisms which would be required to respond to interrupts in an event loop.

The patent is written in such a general way that what it means is open to what ever the patent holder thinks it means, or can convince a judge and/or jury it means. The code it self could apply to selecting menu options with a mouse or by tabbing and using the Enter Key.

This "patent" is a classic example of what is wrong with patenting ideas, math formulas or coding algorithms.

An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information. Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts. A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable with contexts into preferred situations. The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable. While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.

It's not to do with rollovers per se; it's a patent on having "labels" which, when you point at them with your mouse, cause other information to be displayed.

I'm not sure that a rollover image would count as it removes the original "label" when you rollover it - I imagine a lot javascript/CSS menus would be far more likely to fall foul of it based on my reading of the patent.

I imagine a lot javascript/CSS menus would be far more likely to fall foul of it based on my reading of the patent

Yeah, so basically 100% of all websites created with JQuery. Unless this patent specifically addresses only a pop-up information box when rolling over an image, like Redbox does for example when you roll over the cover art for a movie and it then displays the summary and other information for it.

I am not surprised they got some money out of Google or the other big guys. 80K? Really? The lawy

The new computing paradigm of the present invention starts from a new kind of world view: A global economy is emerging with rapid flows of capital, knowledge, products, and competitive pressures. A growing number of companies and industries face new needs to leapfrog their limits and become effective competitors on a global level, transforming their performance, productivity, adaptation, and innovation capabilities. Is it possible for a single leverage point to help fill part of these needs?

This new type of software is defined by its novel purposes: the improvement or fabrication of reality based on its users' ideas and imaginations.

I think someone managed to submit Timecube [timecube.com] as a patent application, which is kind of awesome, although it still doesn't explain what it has to do with rollovers.

Is this a patent on invention? With an illustration showing a man reading the newspaper while a light bulb appears in his thoughts, I conclude that this 1993 invention has successfully cornered the market for all new ideas until it expires.

Okay, that does it: I am now convinced someone submitted this patent as a joke and they never got around to letting the patent office know after getting it approved (which wasn't supposed to happen). Then, patent troll Nathan Myhrvold, the guy who duped the SuperFreakonomics idiots [wikipedia.org] on geoengineering, bought it up for his Intellectual Ventures troll company and then sold it to a troll with even lower morals.

I actually fully agree. If a web developer themself has no clue at all what this patent is talking about, then who is it referring to? Shouldn't experts in the field understand the patent itself? If experts in the field have no clue what they are saying, then are they really saying anything?

Questions which make me fully agree that if a person in the field has no clue what it is saying, that it should be counted as not really saying anything. If it doesn't say anything, it is not really a patent, and we can get rid of it

I actually fully agree. If a web developer themself has no clue at all what this patent is talking about, then who is it referring to? Shouldn't experts in the field understand the patent itself? If experts in the field have no clue what they are saying, then are they really saying anything?

First, the patent application was filed in 1990. The only web developer around at the time was Tim Berners-Lee himself, so web developers aren't the relevant experts.

If a web developer themself has no clue at all what this patent is talking about, then who is it referring to?

The web developer's patent lawyer(s) of course. Surely every web developer is aware by now that they might very well need to employ a patent lawyer? Exactly the same goes for the electronics manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies, and software development is no different from any other patent eligible field of technology, don't you know?;-)

it really doesn't matter because with enough lawyers to keep it in court for years, the large companies crush all the others and squeeze them out of existence. Didn't I just read how the inventor a graphene was told this kind of thing directly and it is why he did not patent it and why he was not able to collect any royalties for his invention?

This kind of thing is destroying innovation because it becomes futile to try and create something new when you'll just end up in court and eventually the lawyers get all your money and the other side gets all your IP.

This is a perfect example why software patents need to be invalidated across the board. They do nothing to help consumers or innovation...they're just a tool used by companies to extort money from legitimate businesses.

Sadly, the politicians who are the ones in a position to do something about this silliness, have no clue whatsoever about software patents... all they know is "patents in general are good, and software patents are patents, so they must be good too".

We have almost no politicians with a technical background, or even a background in tech business, so few understand the issue or even understand that it is an issue. Still, the US seems to be in a worse bind with its politicians: they seem to be all ex-lawyers

Who cares about the politicians? Webvention is suing a pharmaceutical company, which certainly has their own lobbyists. All they need to do now is go after Exxon-Mobil, Monsanto, Smith & Wesson, and Philip-Morris, and software patents are gone for good.

Smith&Wesson probably would be evil if they weren't doing such a great job killing off all the gun nuts, but Exxon-Mobil? By what comparison are Exxon-Mobil not evil? Start the list in Alaska, and work your way south.

I like how you lumped in the companies that are not evil but are hated by liberals (Exxon-Mobil, Smith & Wesson) with the companies that are actually evil (Monsanto, Philip-Morris) in your little fantasy. And then left out Google.

He wasn't talking about evil potential victims of patents; he was talking about powerful potential victims of patents. What's wrong with lumping powerful companies together (whether they're evil or not), when you're talking about using power?

If all hell were to break loose and start Patents World War I, perhaps it would provoke some serious questioning over the rationale of patents. Or at least the current system. I myself would favor an abolition of all private property, other than the 3sq ft you are standing on and objects you carry on your person.

Yeah sure! This is patent World War I, in which patent France won and demanded patent Germany pay patent reparations. These patent reparations ultimately caused patent Hyperinflation in patent Germany and led to patent World War II. In patent WWII patent Stalin signed a patent non-aggression pact with patent Hitler and was completely taken by surprise when patent Russia was invaded by patent Germany. Patent Stalin allied with Patent USA eventually won and signed a patent peace where they divided up patent Europe in a patent cold war that lasted almost 50 years.

imho every tech company would sue every other, amounting to a kind of denial-of-service clog in the legal system. No possible resolution of so many suits other than renegotiate the rules, or a truce, which is what we have now. Liberty of ideas is not what we have now. We have a kind of invention ideas "pax romana" reality.

Isn't image rollover part of the HTML standard? I recall seeing this type of functionality in early web sites when browsers were first being used. I really hope that somebody with deep pockets decides to fight this and get the patent invalidated.

No, back in the day it was inline Javascript with onmouseover/onmouseout events (even with image preloading if you were "fancy") - now that IE6 is finally starting to fade away (IE6 only supports the:hover pseudo selector on anchor tags) there's no reason not to use CSS sprites, which means no more superficial attributes or Javascript for rollovers.

No, back in the day it was inline Javascript with onmouseover/onmouseout events (even with image preloading if you were "fancy") - now that IE6 is finally starting to fade away (IE6 only supports the:hover pseudo selector on anchor tags) there's no reason not to use CSS sprites, which means no more superficial attributes or Javascript for rollovers.

Speaking of "sprites", that was a term used for a moving graphic character on the Texas Instruments TI 99-4A as far back as 1979. Using console basic, one sprite could be controlled via a joystick and a "coincidence" event was registered when that sprite occupied the same screen location (within an adjustable sensitivity range) as another sprite. A response to that event could then be coded. I (and probably thousands of other people) coded "pop-up" GUI menu systems and other similar widgetry using Console B

It uses pieces of HTML standard, just as *.softwarepantent uses parts of *.hardware's instruction standard.The patent claims appear to be describing hierarchial popup/expanding menus that while being hovered over displayed content in a pane or popup (helptext?) elsewhere, also being able to drill down the structure without having to keep the menu open.

But I only skimmed to claim 30 or so, too much bullshit after.This was filed in '90, granted '93, i'm thinking compuserve or AOL may have prior art in that ar

You're going to have to find something older than HTML/most if not all things web browser related for it to be called prior art. The relevant patent was filed in February 1990. Based on a very quick skim of certain parts of the patent (I'm not reading the whole thing anytime soon...), it sounds like it was meant to apply to computer programs in general...so if you want to look for prior art you need to find a GUI program from the 80s that used rollovers.

You need to point out what in the Patent actually relates to rollovers first. It's so hard to decipher what its actually saying that you could say its a patent for buttons you click and no one would know the difference.

Did you notice that this patent was filed in 1993. That is a long time before many versions of the HTML standard. I would guess that obviousness would be a better line of attack, or just waiting it out. How long are software patents in the states? 17 years or so...

Problem is, reviewing wrongly-granted patents takes years - 5
years for the 1-click patent and it wasn't even invalidated, just narrowed.

In other fields, this isn't a huge problem. In pharma, or the automobile industry, a threat is met with a legal team and a counter-suit. For software, when it's small businesses or even individuals that get threatened, they don't have the time and resources to play the game. It's the old joke about the manager phoning his lawyer "Some company wants me to pay them $5K for a liccnece, do I have to pay that?" "Give me $40k and I'll review it". (That number is the cost estimate that Dan Ravicher gave for giving a client a certificate of non-infringement.)

In pharma, or the automobile industry, a threat is met with a legal team and a counter-suit. For software, when it's small businesses or even individuals that get threatened, they don't have the time and resources to play the game.

A reexamination request only costs $2,520. One was filed in this case a month ago, actually. And for your talk of small business and individuals, note that this company isn't going after small businesses or individuals. It's going after companies that range from large to huge: Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony, Orbitz, Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa. These are some of the largest companies in the world.

Furthermore, yes, it may be costly for an individual business or developer, but they can band together to each chip in a small amount to pay for reexamination or a declaratory judgment suit for a patent that threatens all of them.

You also seem to be assuming that there are no small businesses in pharma or the automobile industry. In fact there are many small drug companies, and most biotech companies are quite small. There are also many small companies in the automobile industry that make replacement parts, aftermarket accessories, etc. There are very few industries wholly made up of large companies.

The solution to this kind of thing is to tighten the written description and enablement requirements and reduce the presumption of validity. There is no need to blindly focus on software patents. They aren't special.

It's the old joke about the manager phoning his lawyer "Some company wants me to pay them $5K for a license, do I have to pay that?" "Give me $40k and I'll review it". (That number is the cost estimate that Dan Ravicher gave for giving a client a certificate of non-infringement.)

I wonder where Ravicher got his numbers. They're completely out of line with the AIPLA Economic Survey (a survey of practitioners), which found that the average cost of an infringement opinion is more like $13,000. And bear in mind that's the average; many attorneys are going to charge less for less complex cases or offer a sliding fee scale to small businesses and individuals. Just because a large law firm might charge 5 figures for an opinion does not mean that there aren't competent, technically trained IP attorneys that would do the same work for a fraction of that. I know because I'm one of them.

First, the application was filed in 1990, so prior art is going to be harder to come by than you might think.

Second, the patent was already thrown into reexamination a month ago. Check reexam 90/011,229 on PAIR [uspto.gov] for the details. The law firm that filed the reexam request is Townsend, Townsend & Crew [townsend.com], which is a major IP firm. The request cites multiple pieces of prior art and looks pretty well put together. One of the first things the examiner did was try to call the patent owner for an interview. The examiner couldn't get ahold of them. That's a bad sign for the patent owner.

Some of the prior art citations include HyperCard and HyperText.

Third, courts have tended to temporarily halt litigation (a procedure called a stay) while they wait for the results of a reexamination. It's quite possible that this patent is about to die in the Patent Office without the lawsuits moving forward.

Another problem that could have been circumvented if we limited patent terms to approximately "one generation of technology"/3. In this case it'd be about 12/3=4 years.

17 years is a holdover from the days of covered wagons and rail; where there were no parcel systems, no telecommunications, and no rapid prototyping plants. If we scaled 17 years by the growth in effective rate of fabrication and marketing, it'd probably be on the order a few months. Four years is shockingly conservative.

Patents today run for 20 years from time of application, or 17 years from date of grant (whichever is later, although the 17 year rule only applies to patents filed quite some time ago.) Those dates would be Feb 7, 2010 or Oct 5, 2010 respectively. This patent is expired.

Patents today run for 20 years from time of application, or 17 years from date of grant (whichever is later, although the 17 year rule only applies to patents filed quite some time ago.)

The application in this case was filed before June 8, 1995, meaning that its term is 17 years from the date of issue.

This patent is expired.

Just because a patent is expired doesn't mean one can't sue for past infringement. The statute of limitations on patent infringement is six years. 35 USC 286 [cornell.edu]. So, the owner of this patent can sue for infringements that occurred as far back as October 5, 2004.

However, the equitable doctrine of laches [wikipedia.org] may limit an infringement suit to more recent instances of infringement.

WTF! 1990? I'd say prior art is going to be impossible to come up with in the context of HTTP and the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee's initial proposal for the web wasn't even filed until November of 1990, with the first conceptual tools available by Christmas. The ability to display the graphics necessary for rollovers didn't arrive until later still, and only really got popular with the release of Mosaic in 1993.

Other than Hypercard and similar early hypertext tools like Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu (now there's a blast from the past!), I can't think of many types of software that existed in 1990 this patent would even come close to applying to.

I'd say prior art is going to be impossible to come up with in the context of HTTP and the World Wide Web.

Prior art doesn't have to be in the same context as the infringement. Prior art only has to describe the elements of the claimed invention.

In this case, the application doesn't mention the Internet or the Web, though it does mention HyperText and HyperCard. The claims are written in broad terms, which actually makes it easier to find an example of something that fits the bill. If the inventor had bee

An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information.

Patent legalese for "Using a computer"

Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts.

I prefer to call them directories. But some folks like "folders".

A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable (sic) with contexts into preferred situations.

Hmm.... View->Details. Custom Folder views....

The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable (sic). While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.

Am I the only one that reads this as a file system? This has basically just described viewing & renaming multiple folders with properties and permissions.
Just because one adds "meta" or "abstract" on a level of a system doesn't mean they've invented something new. As a matter of fact, it means the exact opposite. It means the designer doesn't know what the user will need, so they're trying to keep the options open. As a developer I understand this can mean a lot of work in coding, but it's nothing new. Customization != Invention, and I hope the patent office can take on this 1 rule:
If your patent says "meta" or "abstract", you lose, you fail, no patent for you.

The part being quoted (description), while pretty clearly talking vague nonsense, actually has zero bearing on the patent itself. When determining whether or not a patent is infringed, the Claims section is the only part worth even looking at. Pretty much the only time the description can have any effect on a patent is if an undefined or loosely-defined term is used in the claims; the examiners/court/whomever is then generally allowed to use the definition, if any, present in the description.

I would rather invest $80,000 in a work around than to pay that extortion fee. Heck I would invest $160,000 in a work around! Then sell it for a one time fee of $2,000 to everyone who was being harassed.There is no way Rollover images are worth that much.

Big pharma companies like Novartis live and die by patents. They're not afraid to duke it out with a patent troll, as it would give their army of patent lawyers something to do. Perhaps they can do some good in this case if they can persuade the court that this practice should be curtailed.

As I mentioned earlier, just because a patent is expired doesn't mean one can't sue for past infringement. The statute of limitations on patent infringement is six years. 35 USC 286 [cornell.edu]. So, the owner of this patent can sue for infringements that occurred as far back as October 5, 2004.

However, the equitable doctrine of laches [wikipedia.org] may limit an infringement suit to more recent instances of infringement.

Even if this was a valid patent the websites are all just sending html/text to whatever agent the user is running. It's the browser that is actually doing the rendering. So does that not mean that the browser is the one that needs to get the license?

Ok, read a good bit of the patent and having spent a great deal of time with a patent attorney over the years I can say that this has nothing to do with rollovers at all. If they are stretching the "point to a token and simultaneously displaying a segment of information from a larger body of information" portion of the claim to be *THE CLAIM* they're gonna get hosed. The rest of the patent document clearly states that this invention is...

The present invention is specifically a system for users to rapidly collect and rearrange a wide variety of specific Contexts into flexible, imagination driven patterns and then to access them rapidly for guidance when needed to improve performance or to transform situations.

Surely this "idea" was invented by the people who created the part of javascript that allowed img src to be changed at will and re-rendered instantly? Just because Random Person was the first to deploy the technique, that does't mean Random Person invented it.

1.) Patent was filed in 1993; meaning the fraudster waited till the last possible second.2.) Patent covers a basic part of the HTML/JS spec, which is kind of like patenting a "for" loop.3.) Lawsuit was filed in East fucking Texas.

The penalty isn't for losing, it's for fighting. Most big companies can't be bothered with the hassle of paying lawyers for protracted lawsuits, where the judges often don't understand the technical detail being discussed and so there's a risk of losing even if the lawsuit is patently bollocks.

Patent trolls exploit the fact it's cheaper to roll over & pay the fee than it is to fight, where if you win, you lose.

It's not the water, it's the judges, mostly T. John Ward. He's got his own rules about patent suits and runs cases very quickly by means such as not allowing lengthy discovery (which obviously puts defendants at a substantial disadvantage).

It's also a legal tarpit, as he almost always rejects transfer motions.